01-3010-1 ch1.qxd 9/25/07 4:53 PM Page 1 chapter one Prime Minister Koizumi’s Visit to North Korea The onigiri, or rice balls, that were served for lunch were left on the table, as if they were some kind of offering. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi did not touch them at all.1 It was September 17, 2002, and Koizumi was sitting in a specially designated anteroom on the ground floor of the Paekhwawon (Hundred Flowers) Guest House in Pyongyang. It was a little past noon, and he had just finished a top-level talk with Chairman Kim Jong-il. Koizumi silently watched the Japan Broadcast- ing Corporation satellite TV news program that was reporting on the talk. Armed North Korean police officers were occasionally seen outside the win- dow. Inside the room, seated around the table with Koizumi, were Shinzo Abe, deputy cabinet secretary; Norimoto Takano, deputy minister for foreign affairs; Hitoshi Tanaka,director general of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA); Isao Iijima, personal secretary to the prime minister; and Kenji Hiramatsu, MOFA’s director of the Northeast Asian Affairs Division. Koro Bessho, another secretary to the prime minister, seconded from MOFA, kept restlessly going in and out of the room. “The TV is too loud,”said Tanaka, but Iijima immediately shot back,“No, it’s better this way.” He instructed a foreign ministry official nearby to turn the vol- ume even higher. When Koizumi started talking, however, the official immediately turned the volume lower. But Iijima, as if to say,“No, no,”pointed his right index finger at his right ear and instructed the official to turn the volume up again. “If the North Koreans won’t acknowledge their wrongdoings,”Tanaka said to Koizumi,“you have to push them.”Abe pressed further: “Unless they disclose in full what took place and formally apologize for their wrongdoings, you should 1 01-3010-1 ch1.qxd 9/25/07 4:53 PM Page 2 2 / the peninsula question not sign the joint statement. If they don’t do that, you should get up and leave.” At Abe’s last sentence, everyone fell silent. Takano broke the silence, agreeing, for the most part, with Abe: “We should consider not signing the statement if their attitude remains the same.” If in the scheduled afternoon session Kim Jong-il would not acknowledge that North Korea had abducted Japanese citizens and, accordingly, would not offer a formal apology, Koizumi could never sign what would become the Japan- DPRK Pyongyang Declaration. The summit would be a total failure. Abe thought that they had no choice. The prime minister of Japan himself had come all the way from Tokyo to settle the issue directly with the leader of North Korea. Abe was convinced that the Japanese people would not endorse normal- ization of diplomatic relations with North Korea if Pyongyang did not apologize for the abductions now that, prior to the summit meeting, it had even disclosed the number of deceased among “the missing.”Its actions were a state crime. He also was convinced that their conversation was bugged, but he hoped that Kim Jong-il was among those who could hear what he was saying.“First of all, we have to request a formal apology from Kim Jong-il,” he thought. “That is the first order of business.”2 Abe was not alone in that wish. Koizumi simply said,“I’ll say . .,”before resuming his silence. Koizumi’s visit to Pyongyang was a day trip. Pyongyang is only about a two- hour flight from Tokyo, and the trip took about fourteen hours altogether. Koizumi had two meetings scheduled, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. There was a short preparatory meeting just before the first meeting. Earlier that morning, Koizumi had arisen at 5:00 a.m. in his temporary offi- cial residence in Higashi Gotanda, Tokyo. The government airplane took off from Haneda Airport at 6:46 a.m., carrying him and his entourage. Aboard, Koizumi reviewed the text of the Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Declaration, with which he was very pleased.“This is a very good document,”he remarked. He also reread the message from President George W. Bush that U.S. Ambassador Howard Baker had presented to Yasuo Fukuda, chief cabinet secretary, the pre- vious day. The message called for Koizumi’s renewed attention to North Korea’s enriched uranium program, referring to recent information from U.S. intelli- gence agencies. President Bush, however, requested that Koizumi not refer to that information in the Japan–North Korea summit talk.3 Koizumi gave a thin smile. He thought that the United States was overreacting. He had no intention of normalizing diplomatic ties with North Korea if he had to depart from the Pyongyang Declaration. Nevertheless, he appreciated the message, which had the effect of reassuring him that President Bush was fully on his side.4 Koizumi’s plane touched down at Pyongyang Sunan International Airport at 9:14 a.m. It was a perfect, clear autumn day. Kim Yong-nam, president of the pre- sidium of the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly, was at the airport to welcome 01-3010-1 ch1.qxd 9/25/07 4:53 PM Page 3 prime minister koizumi’s visit to north korea / 3 Koizumi and his party. Koizumi slowly walked down the ramp to become the first Japanese prime minister to visit North Korea since the end of World War II. At 10:00 a.m. sharp, Korean Central Television and the Voice of Korea reported on the arrival of the prime minister.5 The Japanese delegation pro- ceeded to the northern section of Pyongyang, where the Paekhwawon Guest House, believed to be the most prestigious of the more than 100 state guest houses in North Korea, is located. The Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where the body of the late Chairman Kim Il-sung lies in state, is nearby. Kim Jong-il held all of his summit talks at this guest house, including those with President Vladimir Putin of Russia in July 2000 and President Jiang Zemin of China in Sep- tember 2001. Inside the guest house, on the left about 150 feet (50 meters) from the front entrance, are three conference rooms. The central room was chosen for this Japan-DPRK summit. It was only several minutes before the first session of the summit meeting that the Japanese delegation was informed of the results of the North Korean “investigation” concerning the whereabouts of the Japanese abductees. Prior to the first session, a preparatory meeting was held in an annex building between Hitoshi Tanaka and Ma Chol-su, director of the Asian Affairs Department of North Korea’s Foreign Ministry. During the meeting, Ma informed Tanaka that five of the abductees were still alive and that eight had died. Tanaka immediately requested that North Korea thoroughly examine and report on the causes and circumstances of the deaths of the eight abductees. In response, Ma promised that the North Korean Red Cross Society would dispatch the results of the inves- tigation to the Japanese Red Cross Society. Ma chose to refer to the abductees as “the missing.” After the end of the preparatory meeting, Tanaka half ran to the main build- ing. It was quite a distance. North Korea must have deliberately held the meet- ing in the remote annex building so that Prime Minister Koizumi would have to walk into the summit talk without ample time to review and analyze the North Korean information. Tanaka realized that the Japanese were caught in a trap, but it was too late to do anything about it.6 He felt pressed. Upon entering the main building, he tripped on the thick carpet. Koizumi was shocked into silence when he heard Tanaka’s report. Kim Jong-il appeared wearing one of the khaki-colored military jackets, obvi- ously of the best-quality cashmere, that he wears whenever he appears before his subjects or meets foreign dignitaries.7 At the outset of the talk, Kim Jong-il expressed his appreciation to his guest, saying, “As the host, I regret that we had to make the prime minister of Japan come to Pyongyang so early in the morn- ing in order to open a new chapter in the DPRK-Japan relationship.” Continu- ing, he said, “I strongly hope that we can use this opportunity to begin a new, genuinely neighborly relationship between our two countries, thereby making 01-3010-1 ch1.qxd 9/25/07 4:53 PM Page 4 4 / the peninsula question the expression ‘a country nearby, but remote’ a saying of the past.” He went on to praise the draft of the Pyongyang Declaration, which, if signed by the two lead- ers, would become the basic document for normalization of diplomatic rela- tions between the two countries. Kim specifically referred to the contribution that Hitoshi Tanaka had made in drafting the document. During the subsequent talks, he mentioned Tanaka’s name twice to express his appreciation for Tanaka’s contribution. Hearing that, one of the Japanese delegates marveled at Kim Jong- il’s diplomatic niceties. Kim Jong-il proudly emphasized that the secret negotia- tions between Japan and North Korea that had led to the meeting had been conducted without being leaked to the outside. He said that he himself had not mentioned the negotiations to anyone, not even the Chinese and the Russians. “I, too, hope that the opportunity that this meeting presents will greatly advance bilateral relations between our two countries,” Koizumi responded, repeating the word “opportunity,” which Kim had used.